by Ian Irvine
No one spoke for a long time, although Gilhaelith was still smiling.
‘Gilhaelith,’ Irisis said as pleasantly as she could, ‘where’s Nish?’
‘I left him behind when we snatched the relics,’ Gilhaelith said, as if Nish were of no significance.
‘What do you mean, left him behind?’ She took him by the coat and lifted him to his toes. Gilhaelith was a good head taller, but he looked alarmed.
‘Dozens of lyrinx were just seconds away and the soldiers on the ground were dead. I couldn’t wait for Nish to get aboard, so I went without him.’ He shrugged.
Irisis let him go, turned away, then swung back and brought a ferocious right hook out of nowhere to crash into his jaw. It drove him against the wall, and as he crumpled to the floor she said, ‘If Nish is dead, so are you.’
She stumbled down the ladder, blinking tears out of her eyes, and threw herself on the floor between Merryl and one of the soldiers. Merryl gripped her shoulder.
‘I think I’ve cracked a knuckle on the bastard,’ she muttered.
Irisis was making last-minute checks of the field controller, her knuckles bound in a yellow rag, when a pair of lyrinx flew towards the command area, a blue truce flag fluttering behind them. She hastily threw a cloth over the device and went out of the tent. Flydd, Troist and Orgestre conferred, then Flydd ordered a blue flag to be raised, indicating that they would allow the parley. The lyrinx flew away, shortly returning with the flag and another lyrinx, an enormous black, golden-crested male.
He landed by the command tents and went forward to where Flydd stood with but a single attendant, as required in the truce parley. The escort waited with the flag while the black lyrinx spoke briefly with them. After a minute or two he began flashing the most violent patterns of reds and blacks Irisis had ever seen. The black lyrinx abruptly turned to the flagpole, wrenched it out of the ground and snapped it across his knee. He tore the truce flag into two, trampled it into the dust and climbed into the sky so rapidly that his escort, still holding the other flag, was left far behind.
‘He didn’t like your attitude?’ Irisis said after they’d gone.
Yggur followed her over, with Troist.
‘He demanded to know why Gilhaelith hadn’t kept his word,’ said Flydd, visibly shaken. ‘I explained the new situation and demanded that he hand over the power patterner, sue for peace and enter into a pact of eternal friendship, after which we’d consider returning the relics. Perhaps I overplayed my hand.’
‘It would appear that way,’ said Yggur.
Flydd looked as if he wanted to punch Yggur in the mouth.
‘He demanded that I hand over the stolen relics unconditionally,’ Flydd said. ‘I – I went too far. I threatened to destroy them if he didn’t cooperate. He pointed out that, if we did, we’d have nothing to bargain with, and they would slaughter us to the last man. I suggested that he might get a surprise if he tried, and the next I knew he was gone.’
‘He came to bargain in good faith,’ said Yggur, ‘and you showed him, yet again, that the scrutators have none.’
‘Perhaps I’ve grown too hard, or too desperate,’ said Flydd.
‘Then we’d better get ready to fight,’ said Troist. ‘And I really hope your mind-shockers and your field controller are up to the business, Flydd, because at the moment they’re the only thing between us and destruction.’
The lyrinx attacked two hours later but the defence did not go as expected. Flydd’s field controller had no effect on the enemy’s Arts and devices, though it had been operating perfectly that morning. While Irisis was trying to work out what the matter was, Orgestre and Troist hastily sent out four hundred clankers, each containing one of the mind-shockers tuned to a set of five specially modified master farspeakers, each with its operator, and all under the direction of Klarm. The remaining hundred mind-shockers had been kept for defence. The plan was for the clankers to encircle the enemy on three sides. The master farspeaker operator would send its signal and each mind-shocker would emit a ferocious burst of barbed mindspeech, so painful that all lyrinx nearby would be forced to flee in the only direction left to them – over the cliffs and down to the Dry Sea. There, being uncomfortable in heat and bright light, they would be at a greater disadvantage.
At least, that was the plan. Unfortunately the mind-shockers did not work either. After the first shock was sent the lyrinx fell about laughing, then formed up in their ranks and charged.
‘They were working perfectly this morning!’ Flydd said when the operators reported back. He wasn’t so much shocked as dazed. He couldn’t work out what had gone wrong. ‘We tried it on three captured lyrinx and they nearly shed their skins in agony.’
‘Well, it’s not working here,’ shrilled the operator. ‘They’re coming –’
They heard nothing more from her.
The master farspeaker operators tried again and again as the clankers retreated to the army, but the mind-shockers kept failing. Troist threw together a desperate defence, with eight thousand battle clankers forming a ring of armour around the foot soldiers, though such an overwhelming force of lyrinx would soon breach it. Possibly afraid that the relics would be destroyed, the enemy didn’t launch an all-out attack, but they forced the army around in a sweeping curve until its only line of retreat was towards the cliffs.
Flydd and Irisis held a hurried conference to discover what had gone wrong while Troist stood by in case they made a breakthrough.
‘Their power patterner must be doing it,’ said Flydd, trying to get his head into the complex bowels of the field controller, though Irisis couldn’t imagine what he hoped to see there.
‘Surr,’ said an anxious artisan, terrified that he’d do irreparable damage, ‘if you could be careful –’
He whipped his head out and she leapt backwards out of the way.
‘Their power patterner isn’t stopping our clankers from going,’ said Troist, furious that his men were dying so uselessly.
‘Who knows how they can pattern power?’ mused Flydd. ‘What do we do now?’
‘We go where they drive us,’ said Troist bitterly, for the enemy were closing in all around, leaving open only a steep and rugged track that led down a gully eroded into the cliffs, all the way down to the Dry Sea. The clankers would be lucky to get down it without overturning. ‘They’re doing exactly what we planned on doing to them.’
‘The enemy would appear to have a sense of irony,’ Gilhaelith observed. ‘I’m fascinated to see what you’re going to do now, scrutator.’
Flydd crab-walked away and roared at the rest of the artisans, who came running. ‘Irisis?’ he bellowed. ‘Get this wretched thing fixed or I’ll have all your heads.’
The lyrinx drove them down onto the Dry Sea, where Troist set up camp and ordered his troops to prepare what defences they could. Irisis was barely aware of the desperate day-long flight, or the bloody skirmishes that punctuated it. Eleven artisans and crafters had been shoehorned into a specially modified twelve-legged clanker, the only kind big enough to accommodate them and their apparatuses. They worked all day and through the night, taking the field controller apart and checking every piece. They made a number of modifications that should have improved the device if they ever got it working again, but couldn’t identify any failure.
‘Do you think if we asked Yggur?’ Irisis said tentatively, for Flydd seethed with a cold rage that she’d only seen before on the way to Nennifer. She didn’t know how to deal with it.
‘I’ve asked!’ Flydd said. ‘I’ve begged, pleaded and even humbled myself, but he won’t budge.’
‘Have you … er, given any thought to what he said?’
‘I’ve thought of nothing else, Crafter. I’ve wracked my brains for a solution that doesn’t involve wiping out the enemy. My guts burn like acid, I can’t sleep, I –’
He laid his head against the side of the clanker and closed his eyes for a moment. ‘Anyway, that’s my worry, not yours. Let’s go over it one more
time.’
‘It’s got to be their power patterner,’ said Irisis blearily, much later, as the sun rose over the salt.
‘Of course it is,’ snapped Flydd, who’d reluctantly come to the same conclusion at the end of the sleepless night. ‘I just don’t see how it can be affecting our field controller. That’s why we put those banks of charged crystals at the heart of it – so it wouldn’t need to draw on the field at all. Otherwise any node-drainer could bring it down.’
‘Maybe that’s the problem,’ said Irisis. ‘I wonder …? What has the field been doing during our flight? Has anyone been watching it?’
‘It’s behaving oddly, Crafter,’ said the youngest artisan, Nouniy, who was only seventeen and wore her blonde hair in a myriad of plaits, in imitation of famous Pilot Kattiloe. ‘It’s been whirling, actually.’
‘Whirling?’ said Irisis.
‘That’s the only way I can describe it.’ Nouniy demonstrated its motion in the air with a fingertip.
‘Curious,’ said Irisis, touching her pliance and taking a look for herself. Pulling the rear hatch open, she knelt down and began scratching a design on the salt with the point of her knife.
‘What are you doing?’ said Flydd, crouching beside her with an audible click of his kneecaps.
‘The cycling field must be inducing a contrary field around your sensing crystals, cancelling them out. So the rest of the field controller is working but, since you can’t sense how the field is changing, you can’t do anything with it. Now, if we were to just add …’
She sketched for five or six minutes, stood up and looked at the design from all sides, then nodded. ‘That’ll work. Let’s get it made.’ Irisis carefully carved the pattern out of the salt and crushed it under her boot, in case of spies or traitors.
An aide ran up with a folded message strip. Flydd unfolded it and handed it back to her. She bowed and withdrew.
‘Better hurry,’ said Flydd. ‘Our entire army is on the salt. Whatever the enemy have in mind, it’s not going to be long in coming. And get someone to call Tiaan again.’
Each time a thapter was heard he ran out and stared up at the sky, but Tiaan didn’t appear.
After the modifications had been made, Irisis successfully tested the field controller and went looking for Flydd to tell him the good news. He was preparing a last-ditch defence. If that failed their only options were a suicidal attack on an enemy that vastly outnumbered them, or a desperate flight into the Dry Sea. And everyone knew how that would end.
Troist’s twelve-legged clanker came creaking and groaning towards them, stopped, and the rear hatch was thrown open. Gilhaelith staggered out, as white as the salt beneath his feet. He threw up and wavered off towards a vacant tent.
Troist got out soon after, tally sheets under his arm, and came looking for Flydd to give his report.
‘What’s the matter with Gilhaelith?’ said Flydd. ‘He’s usually the picture of self-control.’
‘I took him up to one of the battlefronts. I thought it’d do him good to see what his meddling had caused.’
‘He didn’t like it?’
‘It was a savage attack, and our counterattack was even more bloody. We were right in the thick of it and when it was over, the bodies – theirs and ours – were piled higher than my clanker. A lot of them were in pieces.’
‘That’s what war is like,’ said Flydd. ‘It doesn’t even shock me any more.’
‘It still has an impact on me,’ said Troist. ‘But Gilhaelith had never seen a battle before. I thought he was going to throw up all over my operator.’
‘It’ll do him good,’ Flydd said callously.
‘It’s given him a lot to think about. How’s it going?’ said Troist, nodding towards the field controller.
‘It’s got to work,’ said Irisis, gnawing on a leathery strip of some unidentifiable dried meat, as tasteless as anything she’d ever eaten in the manufactory.
‘Only if humanity is fated to survive,’ said Klarm, who’d recently came back from a spying flight in Chissmoul’s thapter. He was drinking strong black ale, his third for the morning, despite the edict that only weak beer was allowed before battle. Klarm had to have his drink. ‘It may be that our time is over and the lyrinx are due to inherit Santhenar.’
‘I always thought, if we did lose,’ said Irisis, ‘it would be after some mighty siege lasting for weeks, full of incredible deeds of courage and derring-do. I didn’t think they’d just drive us out onto the salt until we died of thirst.’
‘There’ll be an almighty battle before it comes to that. I’m not going out with a whimper.’
‘Nor I,’ she said fiercely.
‘I’ll make my last stand beside you any day,’ Klarm said.
‘Then bring it on,’ she said savagely, flinging the dried meat away. ‘With Nish gone, I don’t have anything left to hope for.’
‘He could have survived,’ said Klarm. ‘I’ve been to the site and found the bodies of the soldiers, but no Nish.’
‘They must have taken him away to question him. And after that, to eat him.’
‘The lyrinx don’t eat people any more, Irisis. Gilhaelith was right about that.’
‘They still kill them, though.’
Irisis stood in the shade of the canvas, watching as Flydd readied the field controller for a last desperate attempt. The struggle was going to be a long-range one, field controller against power patterner, so her work was done unless something broke or needed adjustment. The scrutator was sitting under a piece of sailcloth stretched out with ropes and propped up on poles to form an open shelter whose roof rose about four spans above the salt. He was stripped to the waist and covered in perspiration. She wished she could do the same but that wouldn’t have done in an army camp. Down on the salt, autumn was like midsummer up above.
A stone’s throw away, under another canvas, Klarm prepared to direct his team of operators, who were seated at a long table. Each had a farspeaker globe in front of them, tuned to the massive mind-shockers carried in the forward line of clankers. He and Flydd had concluded that the mind-shockers hadn’t worked because of the failure of the field controller. Runners stood ready to carry messages back and forth between Klarm and Flydd’s team at the field controller.
It squatted on five stubby legs in front of Flydd: an assortment of wires, crystals and strangely curved glass tubes protruding from the top of an open glass barrel. Its operator, Hilluly, another of those young cousins Nish had first tested at Fiz Gorgo, sat by the scrutator’s side, her hands in wired gloves and a bird’s nest of tangled wires and crystals on her head. She was petite, with ashy hair and Yggur’s eyes. She wore a simple white gown belted tightly at a waist that could have been spanned by Klarm’s hands.
A copy of Tiaan’s original but incomplete node map was wrapped around the barrel of the field controller, which could be rotated back and forth. Graduated brass scales ran down the length of the barrel and around its circumference, with pointers that could be slid along to take measurements.
‘What if we offered to give them the relics?’ said Irisis.
‘Out here? And give up the one small lever we have left?’
‘Or threaten to destroy them?’
‘I already tried that one,’ Flydd said ruefully.
Ten spans away, at the far side of Flydd’s shelter so the devices would not interfere with one another, Daesmie hunched over Golias’s globe, relaying messages from the army detachments distributed around them to the four points of the compass, and from Chissmoul’s thapter on watch high above. A runner stood by Daesmie. Because the salt was so flat, the enemy’s movements could not be seen from here. If they broke, or attacked, the news would be relayed at once.
Irisis went over to read what Daesmie was writing. ‘Still no change,’ she said. ‘None of the lyrinx armies have moved all morning.’
They’re playing with us, Irisis thought. They can overrun us whenever they like. She carried the message slate to Flydd, who had a poin
ted ebony cane in his left hand. He scanned it, nodded and waved her away. Irisis stood well back, and the struggle began.
Flydd pointed to a purple coloured node on Tiaan’s map with the tip of the cane, and said, ‘Ifis 44, Nihim 5, Husp 220, Gyr 8.’
Hilluly moved her fingers inside the gloves. A green light spiralled along one of the twisted tubes; a red one slid down another like an icicle down a wire. Strange poppings came from inside the field controller. Sweat broke out on her forehead.
‘They’ve countered your move with the power patterner, surr,’ Hilluly gasped.
Flydd cursed. ‘Ifis 38, Nihim 11, Husp 187, Gyr 22.’ More lights and noises. Much more sweat.
‘Countered at once,’ panted Hilluly.
‘Oh, have they?’ cried the scrutator. ‘Then let them try this!’
A third list, different names again, but the numbers were all single digits.
Hilluly was rigid, apart from her dancing fingers. A line of flies, which were everywhere down here, gathered on her wet lips. Irisis went to shoo them away but Flydd said, ‘No!’
Hilluly gasped and fell forward. The flies rose and settled on the back of her gown, which was wet with perspiration.
‘Now you can help her,’ said Flydd.
Irisis gave the operator a cool drink. Hilluly sat up, rubbing her eyes with her gloved hands, then tore them off and examined her fingers. They were bright red. She rubbed them on her gown and said, ‘Not that time either, surr.’
He rose from his seat, his every rib showing. ‘Thank you, Hilluly.’ Flydd went across to the farspeaker operator. ‘Any movement yet?’
‘No, surr,’ said Daesmie. ‘The enemy seem to be waiting for something to happen.’
‘Keep listening. I’ll be back in a minute.’
Irisis walked out with him. ‘That looked like a game of Strategies.’
‘It’s exactly like it. I don’t have a perfect understanding of the fields here, and neither do they. I have to guess where their knowledge lies, and their ignorance, and they the same about me. It seems we’re evenly matched – whoever guesses or bluffs best will be the winner.’
